eli5: Why do our bodies release heat when we exercise? Shouldn’t it be trying to conserve the energy?
In: Biology
Exercise is using muscles to further develop them, regardless of type of exercise. Muscles burn energy, counted in calories and give off heat as a byproduct.
The body tries to be efficient in burning fuel. It is not able to use that heat as additional fuel. Holding in the energy through conservation would overheat the muscles and they would work less efficiently.
The only time you would want to conserve heat during exercise is if it is really cold out and you need to worry about internal drop in temp. That rarely happens when exercising.
Our bodies need a relatively narrow temperature range to operate at maximum efficiency, gentle muscle activity is ideal for maintaining that temperature, but high levels of exercise take the temperature up too high and the excess needs to be got rid of it before it damages the body. One of the reasons why cheetahs can’t run for very long is the sprints create so much heat that it can’t shed the excess heat quickly enough.
It’s trying, but no machine is perfect, and some energy is always lost to heat, and when you are exercising, you are using a lot of energy, and most of that unfortunately has to go to heat, because we aren’t 100% efficient
The second law of thermodynamics at work. No process that converts energy to work is completely efficient, and the difference is lost as heat transferred to the environment.
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